With the advent of video cameras, a video camera user may take a continuous picture of a golf shot as the user moves the camera to track the flight of the golf ball. This manual tracking system, however, requires one or more workers and a survey transit to track and locate the golf ball. The video camera user also often has difficulty keeping track of the ball during the flight and the golfer has little or no information on the flight path of his shot.
Video cameras have been used for numerous applications in the golf industry such as for viewing golf tournaments, replaying golf shots, and viewing the golf course or shot prior to hitting the ball. Golf courses have been developed with video cameras mounted in various locations on the golf course to allow a golfer to view the ball or various scenes of a course. Examples of such golf courses may be seen in U.S. Pat. No. 4,696,474 by Tegart entitled "Golf Course" and U.S. Pat. No. 4,572,512 by Tegart entitled "Golf Course". Other devices have been developed as golf games for detecting when a golf ball has been hit and for approximating a distance that the ball would have travelled. An example of such a game may be seen in U.S. Pat. No. 3,508,440 by Murphy entitled "Golf Game."
Golf training facilities such as golf schools have become popular for teaching and training golfer's on proper golf techniques and golf shots. These training facilities, however, rely on the judgment of the staff to determine the quality of a stroke by a student. Such judgment, of course, is subjective to the particular staff person.
Further, radar systems have been used to detect the landing point of a struck golf ball. An example of such a system may be seen in U.S. Pat. No. 4,673,183 by Trahan entitled "Golf Playing Field With Ball Detecting Radar Units." Acoustic systems have also been developed for detecting the landing point of a struck golf ball. Examples of these types of systems may be seen in U.S. Pat. No. 5,029,866 by Beard, III., et al. entitled "Apparatus And Method For Determining Projectile Impact Locations"; U.S. Pat. No. 4,898,388 by Beard, III., et al. entitled "Apparatus And Method For Determining Projectile Impact Locations"; and U.S. Pat. No. 5,056,068 by Barnes entitled "Apparatus And Method For Detecting Sharp Signal Variations Against Ambient Signals" which are hereby incorporated herein by reference. These systems, however, do not actually track the flight path of the struck golf ball and do not take into account flight variations caused by a golfer's swing, such as hooking or slicing, or weather conditions of the course (i.e., wind, rain).
Although the above and other proposed systems have provided the potential for improving the sport of golf by providing to the golfer actual or approximate information on performance of the golfer, there is no commercially available apparatus that tracks the actual flight of a golf ball and provides information to the golfer about the flight path of the struck golf ball.